The rise of Echo, Legion, and Buildpad: What are the opportunities for participation?

Author: Xiyou, ChainCatcher

Recently, there have been more and more news about the public sales of crypto projects. It is worth noting that these crypto projects did not choose the early IC0 platform Coinlsit as the sales platform, but turned to the new generation of IC0 platforms that have risen in a low-key manner, such as Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, etc., and these platforms have long established influence in the overseas crypto community.

Ethena, Usual, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, Fuel, Solayer and many other well-known crypto projects have raised funds for the community through these platforms. Many overseas crypto community users admit that participating in the financing activities of these emerging IC0 platforms has become their main way to obtain income.

On January 18, the first public sale project Solayer (LAYER) on the IC0 platform Buidlpad created by former Binance executives ended its sale, and the funds raised were as high as 57.3 million US dollars, 545.24% more than the original plan of 10.5 million US dollars.

On January 13, Cobie, the founder of the Echo platform, revealed an interesting phenomenon: some VCs are putting pressure on crypto project parties to try to prevent them from offering discounts to investors or conducting community sales through platforms such as Echo. In this regard, Legion, an IC0 platform incubated by Delphi Labs, expressed resonance and confirmed that there are indeed cases where VCs prevent projects from being publicly sold.

Although VCs try to resist crypto projects from participating in IC0, this just reflects that these IC0 platforms have already had a certain influence and have occupied an important position in the hearts of crypto project parties and communities. For a long time, the crypto community has been troubled by VC coins with "high valuation, high FDV, and low circulation", but these platforms provide users with early opportunities to participate in projects.

On the same day, Buidlpad said that due to the large number of registered users participating in the Solayer public sale, its website was closed and KYC was paralyzed for a time, and the sale time had to be postponed.

All of this seems to indicate that the crypto IC0 field is expected to usher in the dawn of recovery.

The "Public Offering and Private Sale" Echo Crypto Angel Investor Community Alliance

Echo is a crypto financing platform created by crypto KOL @Cobie. Cobie, formerly known as Jordan Fish, joined Lido in 2021 to be responsible for TVL growth. He is regarded by the community as its co-founder and the initiator of the Web3 podcast UpOnly. He has interviewed many crypto leaders such as Vitalik Buterin, Michael Saylor, and Mark Cuban, and was very popular.

In March 2024, Cobie announced the release of the Echo platform beta and completed its first financing transaction: Ethena raised $300,000 through Echo.

Unlike the public IC0 platforms (such as Coinlist) with large-scale user participation in the past, Echo is not a public fundraising platform for retail investors, but more like a crypto investor community alliance. On the Echo platform, users are supported to create their own investment communities as lead investors, and share their investments with group members to invest together, and then the lead investor can extract a certain share of the investment income.

The working mechanism of the Echo product is similar to Syndicates, a joint investment product launched by AngelList, a fundraising platform for American startups. It aims to allow individual angel investors to raise money from other individual investors, just like VCs raise funds from LPs, and then get a certain share of the investment income, so that those investors with little money and abundant resources have the opportunity to play the role of VC. Therefore, Echo is also known as a crypto angel joint investment platform.

Each financing amount on Echo in the early stage is usually concentrated in hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the number of investors participating in the investment is mostly around dozens of people, which is more suitable for the early angel round and VC financing stages of the project.

Currently, if users want to use the Echo platform to invest in projects, they first need to go through KYC processes such as email, wallet, and X account.

It is worth noting that the project fundraising on Echo is all private sales, no details are disclosed, no marketing or publicity is carried out, and only qualified investors can see the transactions. Investors need to join the group created by the lead investor to obtain fundraising information. Now, if you want to become a lead investor, you need an Echo invitation. Generally, well-known people in the crypto industry are more likely to be invited.

It is revealed that Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, and Marc Zeller, founder of Aave, have created their own Echo communities. Users who want to join not only need to be tested, but also need to meet certain conditions to obtain specific investment opportunities within the group.

Since its launch, more than 30 crypto projects have raised funds through Echo, including Ethena, Morph, Usual, Hyperlane, OneBalance, Wildcat, Sphere, Dawn, Derive, Monad, Initia, MegaETH and many other well-known crypto projects. On January 17, the decentralized trading platform GTE_XYZ also raised $2.5 million through the Echo platform.

Among them, MegaETH's $10 million financing through the Echo platform in December attracted the most attention and attracted the attention of the crypto community. According to an interview with Shuyao Kong, co-founder of MegaETH, MegaETH achieved its first financing goal of $4.2 million on Echo in just 56 seconds. The project then decided to raise another $5.8 million on Echo and completed this goal in 75 seconds.

According to Dune statistics, as of January 17, the amount of financing completed on the Echo platform has reached $66.6 million, with 6,104 investment users and 177 financing transactions greater than $5,000. The average amount of financing per transaction is about 360,000, the number of investors participating in each transaction is 130, and the average investment amount per user is $3,130.

Based on the information of publicly available investment projects, a crypto community user concluded that Echo's lead investor recommendation mechanism and dividend model have democratized trustworthy investment, and the platform prefers to choose high-potential projects supported by a small circle of crypto elites.

Legion Crypto KOL Investor Alliance incubated by Delphi Labs

Legion is an on-chain IC0 platform incubated by crypto venture capital Delphi Labs, which aims to build an investor reputation system so that projects can decide the amount of investment funds and discount benefits allocated to investors. The platform announced in August 2024 that it had completed a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Cyber ​​Fund, with participation from AllianceDAO, Delphi Labs, LongHash, etc.

The specific implementation method is: Legion provides Legion Scores, which aggregates the on-chain and off-chain reputation systems, so that each user on Legion will be assigned a Legion score to reflect the user's value and ability in multiple aspects.

After users register on the Legion platform, they will get a score by connecting their social accounts such as X, wallet addresses, and submitting personal ability information or resources that can be provided for the project. At present, Legion's specific score assessment depends on the user's data in four aspects: "social media influence, development experience, on-chain interaction experience, investment history, and value-added experience."

Through the Legion score, investors have proved their past trading capabilities and data. Project parties can customize financing needs according to project needs, and use each investor's on-chain and off-chain standards to customize allocations, whitelists, discounts, etc., so that only specific investor groups can participate. For example, initial projects can choose users with great social media influence, resources and capabilities as the first batch of investment participants, and they are also the initial candidates for the launch of the project community. If users receive allocations but do not invest, your investor score will be reduced.

According to investment community users, Legion prefers KOLs with a large fan base. Therefore, Legion is also regarded as a crypto KOL investment alliance.

On January 15, Legion’s official social media account X stated that since its launch six months ago, Legion has completed fundraising for five crypto projects, including: modular L2 network Fuel, DePin network Pulse, DePIN project Silencio, privacy computing Enclave, and AI Agent platform Almanak.

Among them, Fuel was listed on the Bitget exchange on December 14, and once surged to $8 after listing. The return on investment through Legion has exceeded 27 times. It is the benefit effect of Fuel that has brought Legion into the crypto community.

Buidlpad, a public offering platform created by former Binance executives

Buidlpad is an IC0 platform created by Erick Zhang, managing partner of Nomad Capital. Erick Zhang was also the director of Binance Research Institute and was responsible for the Lanuchpad platform. In December 2024, it announced the launch of the cryptocurrency public offering Buidlpad platform for KYC-compliant users in non-restricted areas.

On January 10, Buidlpad announced that the Solana ecosystem's re-staking agreement Solayer will conduct a public sale of LAYER tokens on the platform on January 13, which is the first public sale of the Buidlpad platform since its launch.

However, on January 13, Buidlpad stated that due to the excessive number of registered participants on the platform (15 times higher than expected), the start time of Solayer subscription was postponed to January 16.

According to the disclosed information, Solayer plans to raise $10.5 million at a valuation of $350 million, and provide 30 million tokens, each priced at about $0.35. Except for the whitelist, which can obtain the right to purchase SOL worth up to $5,000, each participating address must purchase SOL worth at least $50, and can only purchase SOL worth $2,000 at most.

On January 18, the public sale of Solayer (LAYER) ended, and the funds raised were as high as $57.3 million, 545.24% more than the original plan of $10.5 million.

Similarly, users who want to use the Buidlpad platform need to pass KYC certification.

However, compared with financing platforms such as Echo and Legion, the Buidlpad platform is more open to users and is suitable for platform players who meet KYC qualifications, more like the IC0 previously available to the general public.